I read this article by Walt Bogdanich from the New York Times dated October 15, 2004 and it’s very disturbing. It talks about railroads making Amtrak pay punitive damages to victims of railroad accidents and the class 1s is at fault.
I won’t bother hyperlinking it because I had to registar to read the article so I don’t know if everybody is on the registar yet-it is free though.
I encourage everybody to read it and than come back to this thread and comment on it. This is a really disturbing article indeed as you will soon read.
…There is not too much encouraging news about the operation of Amtrak these days…Budget…congestion on host railroads…seemingly lack of training for employees…{that are not understanding of their operations such as scheduling, etc…}…equipment shortage…program for better operations…{lack of funding to do any improvements}…unable to repair equipment waiting for such repairs…not enough new equipment coming on stream…I’m sure the list goes on beyond this.
How can we as a nation, ever get a competent group assembled to brain storm, first if the service is to continue, and if so HOW to DO it and FUND it…!! It seems to have a good leader in Mr. Gunn to manage it but it seems he has practically nothing to do it with.